Ha ha!

You certainly never know what movie he'll review next!

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Burl reviews The First Power! (1990)

Well hello again friends, it’s Burl here! I’d like to review
a picture I saw way back when it was released into theatres in 1990! Ha ha,
back then I would just go and see anything that looked interesting, and
especially any horror movies! I’ve always loved seeing horror pictures in the
cinema whenever possible, and that policy has usually served me well!

Today’s picture, The
First Power, was one that seriously tested my resolve, however! For a while
I thought “Ha ha, Burl, maybe this policy of going to see any horror picture in
the theatre is not so wise after all!” But after some thought I realized that The First Power is not really so much of
a horror picture anyway – it’s more of a cop action drama! And re-watching the
picture again the other day only confirmed this opinion!

It seems there’s a satanic slasher killer at large in L*s
Angeles, and only noted serial killer expert cop Lou Diamond Phillips – with
help from a mysterious psychic – can catch the jagger-lipped fellow! The
psychic warns him not to send the killer to death row, but that’s straight
where he goes, and it’s after his execution that things are meant to become
interesting!

The psychic is a pretty lady, of course, played by Tracy Griffith
from Fear City, but Lou is dedicated
to his philosophy of logical positivism, and he doesn’t buy into any mumbo
jumbo or hocus pocus! So when the killings continue it takes a while for him to
believe that old liver lips is back! But after witnessing the killer make
several spectacular leaps – this picture is absolutely lousy with spectacular
leaps, ha ha! – he changes his tune, accepts the possibility of pocus at the
very least, and from there it’s a race to figure out just how to kill the
body-hopping fellow once and for all!

It’s a silly picture, very mechanically done! It’s never
once scary, though there are points where you feel the panic of the characters
as they realize this satanic boogeyman is going to find them wherever they go!
But like I said, it’s mostly about spectacular leaps and other such stunts!
There’s one stunt scene involving rushing water that was apparently a
record-breaker at the time, but it’s shot so drearily that the excitement is
never there! Ditto the building-jumping scene!

This was one of a bunch of similar pictures that came out
around the same time: Exorcist III, Shocker, Mister Frost, and probably more! (Two out of those three I saw in
the theater, ha ha!) All of them feature chuckling, whispery, know-it-all
serial killers who don’t fear incarceration or execution because they’ve made
contingency plans! I’d say this was the worst of the genre, and almost as
forgettable as the might-as-well-be-a-remake that came out eight years later, Fallen, which featured Denzel Washington
in the Lou Diamond role!

It was nice to see David “Re-Animator” Gale in a brief appearance as The Monsignor, but
otherwise the acting is slack and poor! What’s mainly lacking is pep, ha ha! This
movie’s get up and go clearly got up and went, and so I give The First Power only one Jesus knife!